Digital Trends

TeleNav Shotgun December 31st, 2008 | by John Brandon

The main screen on the Shotgun is where you'll find the most important options, such as mapping a new route, favorites, recent places and a simple compass mode. You can also search for points-of-interest (POIs), including broad categories such as food or gas stations, or by browsing through a much more complete list broken into more specific categories such as hotels and airports. One especially helpful addition: You can search for nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and even see whether they charge for access or not. Once you find what you want, getting there is a simple matter of starting the route. Once you do, the screen changes to a visual routing mode so you can see (and hear) about all upcoming turns.

In the vast majority of situations, the Shotgun provides clear and precise directions. The system’s vocal prompts are perhaps not quite as listenable as the ones on many TomTom devices (read: the voice used here isn’t really that sexy), but they work. On a complex route through a busy city, the Shotgun was prompt and accurate about upcoming turns. Purposefully missed turns resulted in a quick instruction to do a U-turn as well. In a few cases, the Shotgun would immediately find a new route. We've used TeleNav software in Boston before, and the only glaring issue we've ever found is that it has trouble being clear about those weird turnabouts.

Now, there are a few minor issues to mention as well. Using the Dash Express and the Shotgun at the same time, the voice on the Shotgun has a bit more cadence to it – it takes longer for the voice to speak directions… sometimes two or three seconds more. That means, if the direction it’s telling you is "in 300 feet, make a sharp right turn" then the Dash will spit it out in plenty of time, but the Shotgun takes longer to get the message across. As a result, there were a few times when the Shotgun told us to do a U-turn when simply taking a new route would have been safer.

As with the Dash Express, the Shotgun does not support multi-point directions. You can't punch in that you want to go to a buddy's house first and then go to the movie store – you just have to set those routes separately. The Shotgun is also limited as far as screen customization. Even the Dash lets you click a software button to see estimated time of arrival versus time left on the route. The Shotgun doesn't let you see things like your current speed, heading, or time to the next waypoint either, as both TomTom and Navigon devices do on multi-point routes. Granted, you can make simple adjustments to the view – say, changing to a 2D or 3D perspective, and zooming in at five different settings (with no auto zoom).

Image Courtesy of TeleNav